Homoerotic poetics in Housman, Owen, Auden, and Gunn

A distinctly homoerotic poetics characterizes the works of poets A. E. Housman, Wilfred Owen, W. H. Auden, and Thom Gunn. Covert homoeroticism in much of this poetry responds to longstanding suppression of male homosexual behavior and discussion of it. Even Gunn's overtly homoerotic poems retain vestigial motifs of disguise. A strong sense of otherness results from homosexual identity in a heterosexually defined society, and common themes among homosexual poets include death, time, youth, and disguise. The peculiar preoccupations of Housman, Owen, Auden, and Gunn hinge at least partly on the idea of the body of work as a substitute for the son not produced, a complex longing for youth and youths, and a fascination with costume, role-playing, and secret codes and their work reflects the sharp homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy informing modernism and post-modernism.Housman persistently addresses death and alienation his conception of the handsome, doomed "lad" significantly influences the poetry of the Great War and he deploys soldiers, criminals, and Narcissus figures to express homoerotic concerns. Owen sets time, death, and blocked procreation against transcendent love between men uses war metaphors for sex roles employs soldiers as stand-ins for homosexuals subverts the artificial separation of flesh from spirit and reclaims derogatory "paleness" as a positive indicator of homosexuality.Auden writes in code to communicate with a private homosexual audience as well as a public heterosexual one when he cannot write openly about homosexuality. His use of coded language demonstrates how a rhetorically skilled writer can subvert the language of the establishment to give the repressed a voice. Gunn writes openly in a society less averse to discussing homosexuality, but he has brought his disguises out of the closet with him. His most recent poems deal with AIDS, which has rallied gay men but heightened barriers between gays and straights and conflicts within the gay/lesbian community. Gunn calls for a wider human community not obsessed with the gay/straight dichotomy, a tolerant, flexible society capable of recognizing that every person differs sexually from every other person but that difference need not cause conflict.